1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication technique between a plurality of pieces of medical equipment and a medical support control device for controlling these pieces of medical equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, in an endoscope operation system, many pieces of medical equipment, such as an endoscope video processor, an endoscope processor light source, an insufflation device, an electrosurgical device and the like, are controlled by a system controller. Such a controller can communicate with various pieces of medical equipment, using a communication interface (hereinafter an interface is referred to as “I/F”), such as RS-232 and the like.
Recently it has been desirable to incorporate not only medical equipment of the same make but medical equipment from different makers, using communications to systemize them. If only medical equipment of the same make is incorporated, each piece of medical equipment can be automatically detected by providing an identifier for each piece of equipment since their communication methods and communication protocols can be shared.
communications such as infrared communications, universal serial bus (USB) communications, RS-232C communications, Ethernet Communications and the like. The different communication systems means a difference in the physical or electrical standards in such various communications, and such a difference includes a difference of a wired interface and a wireless interface, or a difference in connector's configurations (due to the difference in standards, the physical or electrical connection cannot be made). A communication protocol in this case a generally used communication protocol, and indicates the logical connection in contrast to the above-described physical or electrical connection of the communication systems.